


4/16

by ouiripon



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: M/M, Zankyou no Terror AU, but no death, just like what nine and twelve deserve, just love, no sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-03
Updated: 2015-07-03
Packaged: 2018-04-07 11:35:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4261878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ouiripon/pseuds/ouiripon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four and Sixteen are abandoned children of the Athena Plan. For a year, all they’ve seen are white walls, puzzles, and the syringes that pierce their skin every month. “Names are only given out of love—” so Four and Sixteen name each other Shintarou and Seijuurou respectively. (ZnT AU) (but hopefully you don't need to know it)</p>
            </blockquote>





	4/16

**Author's Note:**

> if you haven't watched Zankyou no Terror, please do because it's really beautiful and it made me cry and Nine looks like Midorima
> 
> I would like to think you don't need prior knowledge of ZnT to understand, but I may be wrong.
> 
> the tumblr link is here btw http://kiouji18.tumblr.com/post/123117873816/midoaka-znt-au-4-16

A child no older than five walks into a bare white room, eyes just as blank as the chalky white walls around him. The tiles on the floor feel uncomfortably cold to his bare feet, and the bleached linen of his shorts scratch his knees. He walks to the center of the room and sits cross-legged on the floor.

“Number four.” A monotone voice sparks from one of the corners of the room. “Are you test subject number four?”

“Yes.” Four’s eyes are downcast, focused on the blank piece of paper at his feet. On the wall in front of him, a projection of a paper crane flashes.

“Test number three—finish the puzzle as fast as you can.”

“I understand.”

“Very well, begin.”

Four folds the paper crane in two minutes. When his fingers place the last piece right at the middle, a faint bell dings.

“Spatial Awareness ability improved. Thank you, please leave the testing area.”

Four complies, and turns around to walk through the white door frame. When he turns at the corner of the hallway, he passes by the next test subject walking to the same room he was in a while ago.

His red eyes send chills down Four’s spine.

 

\---

 

“Hello.”

Four blinks and looks up from his half-eaten food. The one in front of him smiles, while he puts down his utensils. It is the red head from a while ago.

“H-Hello,” Four replies.

“Are you not hungry?” The red head asks.

Four shakes his head. “I-I don’t eat a lot.”

“But you do.”

“What?”

“Don’t you eat a lot?” the red head cocks his head to the side. “Yesterday you finished your food, and the day before. The only time you never finished your food was the Friday dinner five weeks ago.”

 _Intense lisp_ , Four notes, _Memory savant_. “What’s your number?”

“I’m Sixteen.” The red head says.

“I’m Four.”

“I know. So why aren’t you eating?”

Four looks at his food. The taste is the same every day, the beans are the same every day. His eyes glaze for a moment.

“I don’t know.”

Sixteen pokes Four’s plastic plate with a fork. “You should still eat it.”  Sixteen insists, frowning. “You get pretty cranky when you skip meals.”

Four doesn’t recall a time when he was cranky, but he eats the rest of his beans anyway—his memory isn’t as expansive as the companion in front of him, better to trust his words.

 

\---

 

“Reading?” Four furrows his brows at the word Sixteen says. Sixteen nods, pointing at the bookshelf in their playroom. The other children pay them no mind, quietly piecing together blank white puzzle pieces continuously.

“It might be fun.” He suggests. Sixteen has already finished his puzzle, and there are still fifteen minutes of play time.

“Aren’t those only for Instructors?”

“There isn’t any sign that says so.” Sixteen shrugs. He pulls Four by the hand and pulls out two random books. “It’s better than the puzzles they give us every day. I’ve already memorized the pattern—it gets boring.”

Despite Four’s protests, he relishes the warmth of Sixteen’s skin on his. It feels foreign, and he can only imagine the blood coursing through his veins. Sixteen peers at both books with burning curiosity and hands Four the one on his left hand. The book reads _Yamato Monogatari_ —Tales of Yamato.

Four glances at Sixteen, whose eyes are wide and curious as he daintily opens his book— _The Count of Monte Cristo_. He looks at every word, line per line, and silently mouths each word he reads. Four watches him for ten minutes. He has never seen someone with so much energy over a silly book, or anybody who had any spark of life in their cold hollow eyes. All of them are abandoned; all of them have nowhere to go.

Yet, Four watches the red-headed five-year-old, scrunching his nose at words he cannot understand, and smiling at jokes cracked here and there.

Four opens his own book, and tries to find a glimmer of life within him through the words Sixteen hands him.

 

\---

 

“You have no names.” Instructor tells the children sitting on the pale tile floor as she wraps up her lesson. There are less children now than before, Four notes. Two have disappeared. “Names are given out of love—but unfortunately, there is no one here who loves you enough to bestow upon you one. You are all—“

“—Abandoned.” Four murmurs, sweeping his bangs away from his eyes. His hair was growing awfully long, and it started brushing his eyelashes. “We are all abandoned; we have nowhere left to go.”

“Is that so,” Sixteen says from behind. Four looks back to see him transfixed at Instructor walking out of the room. His face is expressionless like the children around him, but his jaw is clenched and his eyes slightly narrowed. Angry. Four catalogues this in the list of expressions Sixteen shows.

“None of us have experienced love.” Four says.

“Love is a beautiful thing,” Sixteen says, “I’ve read countless of books on it—love is to laugh with one another, to smile with one another, to hold each other’s hands—“

“You are starting to sound like one of those books, too.”

“Hush, Four, don’t interrupt—Remember, ‘when one of them meets with his other half, the actual half of himself, whether he be a lover of youth or a lover of another sort, the pair are lost in an amazement of love and friendship and intimacy.’”

“My memory does not extend as far as yours, Sixteen. Is it Plato?”

“Correct.” Sixteen smiles, pleased. “Love is friendship and intimacy.”

Four frowns. “Have any of us experienced friendship and intimacy?”

“Haven’t we felt that? Are we not friends?”

Four looks at his hand, aching for the warmth of Sixteen’s dragging him to the bookshelf in the playroom. “I suppose we are.”

“Then,” Sixteen smiles, taking his hand. “Shall we find ourselves new names?”

(Sixteen names him Shintarou—scientist of mollusks because of his “growing seaweed hair.” In turn, he names Sixteen Seijuurou—the first samurai Musashi dueled. Both are not satisfied with their names, but they still take it graciously.)

 

\---

 

It is awkward at first, but eventually the two names fall into place, and Shintarou starts craving for Seijuurou to call his name. He lists down possible reasons why he is starting to crave it:

  1.       Seijuurou’s lisp adds an original quality to his name that no other children give when they tentatively try calling him Shintarou (for the record, he scolds children who are not Seijuurou when they do that.)
  2.       It feels a lot more…personal, to Shintarou, to have a name when the dwindling children around him are still known by cold numbers.
  3.       Seijuurou’s voice cracks something inside of him, like a thick layer of ice slowly being eroded by the summer heat. He calls it friendship—Seijuurou calls it intimacy.
  4.       Shintarou probably cannot tell the difference between friendship and intimacy, Seijuurou fills both gaps in.



 

\---

 

“Shintarou, you’re leaving the beans again.”

“No, I do not feel like eating the beans today.”

“The last time you skipped out on meals—“

“Enough of the figures, I feel full.”

“Your hair is turning greener by the day, it is retribution for the beans you do not finish.”

Shintarou grimaces, brushing the hair out of his eyes. There are no mirrors in the institution, and no one cared to install one for the past four years of their stay; he had no way of telling whatever was going on with his hair or his body for that matter.

“It is probably due to my injections today. Your left eye is turning yellower by the hour, perhaps it is retribution for your nagging.”

Seijuurou frowns, rubbing at his left eye, which true to Shintarou’s word, sported a lighter shade of amber.

“My nagging is purely out of concern for your well being, Shintarou.”

Shintarou glares at him, and Seijuurou glares back. For a minute or two, they stay silent, willing the other to step down. Seventeen has already scooted over to the right to add more distance between them.

Shintarou sighs. “You win.” He says, before moodily shoving spoon after spoon into his mouth. He tries to ignore the flutter in his stomach when Seijuurou laughs, and ends up smiling with his mouth full of green peas.

 

\---

 

“Seijuurou.”

“Yes, Shintarou?”

“What kind of love do we have?”

Seijuurou looks up from the book in his hands. (Today, it is Hemmingway—A Moveable Feast.) “Is there a distinction?” He sits beside Shintarou, shoulder to shoulder, and Shintarou frowns.

“In some books I’ve read, there is a distinction between ‘loving’ someone and ‘falling in love’ with someone.”

Seijuurou hums, going back to his book. “Have you found the difference between it?”

Shintarou crinkles his nose. “From what I’ve read, loving someone is what we do now.”

“And what is it that we do?”

“We…we enjoy each other’s company,” Shintarou lists down reasons with his hands. “We laugh a lot, smile a lot with each other…we care about each other’s wellbeing…”

“But what of the second kind of love? What is it?”

“Falling in love is…” the images of him and Seijuurou bloom in Shintarou’s mind, and the linen shirt he wears feels scratchier than usual. “Falling in love is holding hands…when someone cares for somebody else more than his own well being…wanting to be by their side until the very end.”

Shintarou does not look up from his book, and tries to turn a page with his numb fingers. A beat passed, and Seijuurou spoke.

“That sounds like us as well.”

“Is it?” Shintarou argues, looking up. Seijuurou is looking straight into his eyes, and Shintarou burns under his gaze. Nevertheless, he continues. “Falling in love also tells of proximity—to want to be close to one another, to want to hold one another, and—“

“Do you feel that way?” Seijuurou’s voice is quiet.

“I…I do.”

Shintarou wants to end the silence, the foreign feeling in his stomach resurfaces again and he wants to pound it back.

“Well,” Seijuurou finally says. “I do too.”

Shintarou opens his mouth, and closes it. He opens it again, and proceeds to close it again. Seijuurou chuckles at the sight, and inches nearer to him.

“’Whatever our souls are made of,’” Seijuurou quotes quietly, “’his and mine are the same.’”

“Brontë.” Shintarou says.

“You’re right.”

“So is she.”

Their hands find their way under their knees, intertwining shyly—but with purpose.

“I think I am in love with you, Seijuurou.”

“I think I feel the same way, Shintarou.”

**Author's Note:**

> and of course, if you have watched ZnT, you would know all the children except for Nine, Twelve, and Five died. happy midoaka month :--)


End file.
